Who remembers that old furniture-and-pillow hoard at the end of the hall we used to call “the storage room”? We ended up sacrificing a corner of it to create our laundry room, which left the remaining space more rectangular and easier to access thanks to the new glass door we installed at the end of the hallway.
If you follow us on Instagram or Facebook, you’ve probably seen that this room has been through a quiet transformation recently. For years it served as the catch-all for seasonal decorations, extra furniture, and an alarming number of pillows. It was usable but unfinished, framed and wired for HVAC but left uninsulated and not set up as a true living space.
Early on we didn’t prioritize finishing this room. We figured it could wait until our child was older and could use it more independently for play, movie nights, or sleepovers. But as the years passed — our family grew, and so did those of our friends — the value of an extra 360 square feet of finished space became obvious. Rather than saving it as a storage closet for odds and ends, it made sense to turn it into a functional bonus room.
Looking back, we realize we didn’t show much of this space before because there simply wasn’t much to show. You get a brief look at it in a past house tour and a few laundry renovation posts, but mostly it was a convenient place to lose one shoe or tuck away a half-eaten snack. To make it useful, we planned a straightforward renovation: update electrical, add insulation and drywall, install flooring and trim, then paint.
We started by having our electrician add outlets and recessed lighting — much easier and less expensive with no drywall to work around. To brighten the room, we replaced a single window with a triple window. Fortunately the opening was already framed with a header intended for a larger unit, so switching windows was a relatively simple job and didn’t involve complicated exterior work.
Drywalling a room this size wasn’t something we were eager to tackle ourselves. We hired a local pro who brought a small crew and finished the drywall in three days. That decision saved us a lot of time and headaches. Once the walls were in, the remaining tasks were familiar: prime and paint, install hardwood flooring, add trim and baseboards, and then enjoy the little moment of spinning around in a freshly finished room.
We chose to continue the same oak hardwood flooring used throughout the upstairs to maintain visual flow from the hallway into the new space. Unlike other areas of our second floor that had particle board subflooring and required floating floors, this room had a traditional plywood subfloor. That allowed us to install nail-down hardwood, which was surprisingly satisfying and gave the room an integrated, original look.
We painted the walls before laying the floor, choosing the same Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore that’s used in the hallway so the transition feels seamless. After the flooring and trim went in, the kids were beyond excited — they didn’t care about trim details, they just wanted to run and play.
Now we’re furnishing the room gradually. Instead of filling it with brand-new purchases, we’re bringing in items we already own, relocating toys, and adding a hand-me-down craft table so we can observe how the space naturally gets used. We have a few ideas for the recessed sloped area by the window and are updating a Craigslist find for the room, but we want to let function guide the final layout.
Ultimately this space will be a flexible bonus area for art, homework, games, movie nights, and extra sleeping space when family and friends visit. For now, picture children (and Burger) running laps and laughing while their voices echo off freshly painted walls — the kind of everyday joy that makes a finished room worth every bit of work.
Psst — we also created a Shop Our House page to help you identify furniture and paint colors used around our home.